320 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



seem to be comprised under that general law. The 

 development of a mathematical, a musical, or an 

 inventive genius, or any other peculiar character 

 among civilized races, can be demonstrated not to 

 be due to natural selection. Social heredity would 

 account for them as follows. That each man has a 

 certain amount of mental plasticity is proved by the 

 fact that the mental nature of each individual is 

 capable of being molded by conditions. Now, in this 

 respect, as well as in others, there are many grades 

 in the inherited capabilities of individuals. Some 

 are born with minds especially plastic and hence 

 capable of a high education ; others with a less power 

 of being molded. This has come about over and 

 over again in the history of the world through the 

 ordinary processes of reproduction, just as varia- 

 tions in the colors of feathers and the length of wings 

 have occurred in birds. But these especially plastic 

 individuals grow into different kinds of adults under 

 different circumstances. In a savage community, be- 

 cause of the limited extent of his contact with man- 

 kind, such an individual must become a warrior, a 

 chieftain, or a medicine man ; while the same individ- 

 ual if brought up amid the wider environment of a 

 civilized nation might become a Napoleon, a Michel- 

 angelo, a Newton, a Beethoven, a Gladstone, or an 

 Edison. The innate genius of our great man is not 

 the result of natural selection ; it is simply one of the 

 normal variations in the educability of mind. But 

 the product that results from the action of the en- 

 vironment upon such exceptionally plastic minds is 

 widely different with different environments. The 

 musical genius of a Beethoven and the inventor of the 

 savage's tomtom may possible be on a par; but the 



